April 1, 2008

G3: Red Sox 2, Athletics 1

Matsuzaka's first five batters were a little iffy. He pitched a perfect first, with two strikeouts, but needed 17 pitches. Then he gave up a first-pitch home run to Cust to start the second and fell behind Brown 3-0.

But he got Brown on a grounder to short -- after the Cust dong, he allowed only one of the next 17 A's to reach base (Suzuki singled to open the third and was caught stealing). Matsuzaka struck out seven of his last 11 batters. Of the 21 hitters he faced, only four hit the ball out of the infield.

Yook began the fifth with a single to center. Two outs later, he went to second on Lugo's single off the Blanton's foot and slid in ahead of the tag on Ellsbury's single to right. With two outs in the sixth, Yook tripled and scored on Varitek's double -- which hit above the yellow line in right center (a home run, but the umps blew the call).

Okajima relieved Dice with two outs in the seventh. He walked Cust but got Brown to pop to Pedroia to end the inning. He allowed a single to start the eighth, but got a force play and a fly out before handing the ball to Papelbon.

Bot got an inning-ending force, then came back with some no-nonsense heat in the ninth, striking out the side.

In Matsuzaka's final 13 starts of 2007 (including the postseason), he threw 1,331 pitches in 71 innings, an average of nearly 19 pitches an inning. His average outing was 5 innings, and he needed about 102 pitches to get through it.

The Red Sox have a tough April schedule. After the two games in Oakland, they play three in Toronto before hosting the Tigers and Yankees, then travelling to Cleveland and New York. After April 22's game against the Angels, the Red Sox will have already played the three other playoff teams from last season. The Yankees also meet Cleveland and the Tigers this month, but they also have nine games against the White Sox, Royals and Orioles.

After yesterday's rainout, the Yankees play Toronto at 7 PM (Halladay/Wang). Pedro goes tonight (also at 7 PM) as the Mets host the Marlins.

I'm calling the second half of the game (as GedMan), at least, on youcastr tonight. I think tonight's gimmick will be to read off some of the JoS comments live, but give you voices, like, nix33 might be Charlton Heston, amy could be Trupiano, etc. And remember, no need to leave here to listen to me, just open in a new window if you're lookin' for some secondary and often unorthodox audio tonight. Thanks.

That's so funny, just as leave my self-promoting comment, hoping Allan won't think it's going too far and delete it, I hit publish to see that a new comment went up: Allan promoting me! Thanks, Allan. I like the new avatar....hey, I should come up with my '08 model right now.

I think I'm up for that one Saturday...I'm in one of the 200 "club" sections above 3B. Looks like Buchholz-Litsch. Hopefully Clay's gotten all the bad innings out of his system. I'm looking forward to this, baseball, staying in T.O. for the night. Should be good times.

I need it mainly to get caught up on pitches I might miss when I'm typing a comment.

However, MLB is one of the few (the only?) place that will give you the exact play on an out, rather than say "grounded out to first" (3U or 3-1?) or "grounded into force play at second" (4-6 or 4U?) or "flied out to right center" (so who caught it??).

Nice new icons, everyone. I see Nixon has a new one of Trot. Tim has the Manny swing and watch? I can't tell what Zen's is. Ish and I still hanging in with the 2007 versions. But Allan's is my favorite.... how sweet. (Shamelessly trying to get back in Allan's good graces.)

I am surprised he's still on the team, but at the same time, I know the Sox won't unload him for hte sake of unloading him. They're waiting for the right deal, and that's the smart thing to do. Coco ain't worthless - remember, he was having an amazing defensive season last year until Taco-boy made us forget about him.